This simple question stuck with me most of a day when I, caught off guard by someone of religious belief, wanted to know why I don’t believe in Christianity. I was in the middle of working on some technical projects at the time, so I wasn’t prepared to really go into it. My inability to clearly and concisely articulate why I find Christianity uncompelling – along with other religions – stuck with me for the day. Mulling this over made me realize I should write a list of the things I find unconvincing about religions.
This is that list ordered from most general – applying to the most religions – ending with items focusing on Christianity specifically.
- We have numerous examples of people making gods.
- Mythological origin stories do not line up with scientific knowledge.
- We have no evidence of a god ever performing any actions.
- Religious belief is strongly influenced by birthplace/culture
- Gods tell people to do the things they would have done anyways
- Religions suffer from anthropocentric bias
- The problem of Evil
- Prayers do not work
- Religiously proscribed morality
- The Christian god is a terrible god
We have numerous examples of people making gods
The amount of gods that have been made up to explain things through the ages are many. Three quick examples are the Hindu, Greek, and Christian pantheons.
- Hinduism alone provides clear examples of at least 33 different gods. Depending on how you count, there could be less or significantly (thousands or millions) more.
- The greek pantheon consists of thousands of deities as well if you remember that there are many more than the 12 major deities that many know such as Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Apollo, etc.
- Christianity itself, despite it’s claims otherwise through the doctrine of trinity, is a polytheistic belief system with it’s three worshiped deities (father, son, and holy spirit). Other gods are assumed to exist in the bible, but they are assumed to be less powerful.
Since we have numerous examples of people creating gods – and no examples of gods creating people – we should assume that gods are man made until given clear evidence otherwise.
Mythological Origins Stories do not Line Up With Science
There are thousands of mythological origin stories that have been made up over the years to explain the origin of the earth and the life on it. Here is a non-exhaustive list of issues seen in the Christian creation mythos, although many of these apply to other creation stories as well (Babalonian, Hindu, etc).
- Claiming the world is REALLY small (usually a few countries in size)
- Claiming the world is flat
- Assuming that animals were created for special purposes
- Claiming the earth is far younger than we know it to be.
- Claiming that animals can talk
- Claiming that humans have supernatural powers
- Claiming events happened that we have no evidence for
- Claiming that their deities are the ones who handled world/universe/life creation
- Anthropocentric Bias (Humans are almost always important in some way)
- The timeline of the origin stories does not lineup with what we know happened
While every origin story may not suffer from all of these issues, I’d hazard a guess that all fall to at least one of them.
For example, the Enuma Elish – the Babylonian creation mythos – shows these (and more).
- Gods came to exist
- They made a rather small and flat world
- Humans were created from the remains of a god for the special task of keeping chaos at bay
- Animals talk
- Events happened that we’ve never found evidence for (the earth being made from the body of a god)
We Have no Evidence of a god Performing Actions
When asked for evidence of a god’s existence, many people will point to the world around them in answer. Unfortunately, this is evidence that a physical world exists, not that it was ever created or that a god exists. Other examples of claiming god did something when we have no evidence for it are
- God protecting a gold cross from being destroyed in a fire
- We never saw god in any pictures. The fire wasn’t even burning hot enough to melt metal.
- God providing children as a gift to families
- It’s no secret that sex causes pregnancy, we understand how it happens.
- Healing people
- People fall prey to the Texas Sharpshooter fallacy heavily here by paying attention the times they/others got better instead of didn’t.
- Surviving a disease with a 2% survival rate does not indicate a miracle. The survivor is one of the 2%.
- I’m getting tired of trying to remember what people claim god does and doesn’t do. Check out this page for more things that people claim god did. In all instances, there are reasonable answers that don’t involve god.
Religious Belief is Strongly Influenced by Birthplace and Culture
If a religion was true, you would expect there to be little doubt about the veracity of it. Much like mathematics and science, you would expect there to be a widespread consensus about which religion is correct no matter where you live. We do not, however, see this.
If you are born in a country that is dominated by Hinduism, you are most likely to grow up believing in Hinduism. If you grow up in a country where Buddhism is the norm, you’ll probably grow up a Buddhist. If you grow up surrounded by Christianity, you’ll probably be a Christian. And so on.
Contrast this with mathematics. If you were born in a country dominated by Hinduism, you will always be able to take two discrete items, add two more items, and have four items. This is the same when growing up in a country where Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Atheism, Shinto, or Christianity is the norm.
We can also do the same reasoning with science. Scientific progress relies heavily on others being able to repeat tests in order to confirm or reject the results of a study. No matter where you are, what culture you live in, or what gods you may or may not believe in, you’ll be able to test the gravity of the planet and find it 9.8m/s2(small variations depending on distance from the planet’s center of mass taken into account).
Religion has no such universal agreement, and in my opinion, this lack of agreement is extremely damning.
God Tells People To Do Things They Would Do Anyways
If you listen to the stories people tell about any god calling them to do something, you’ll begin to notice that it’s something they kinda want to do anyways.
For example, I know a young woman who fell in love with Alaska after a trip there one year. She went back to Alaska to see where she might want to live because “God was calling her to go there”. The reason for god to call her there is clear. She already likes the location and was planning to move there eventually anyways. She felt like she had to justify her decision with god.
Religions Suffer From Anthropocentric Bias
Religions often provide a meaning to life, and they do this through varying means. . The most common way many religions accomplish this is by giving the person partaking in the religion some central role. This placing of humans in as the primary movers and shakers of a setting is known as anthropocentric bias.
For example, Zoroastrianism asserts that you should live your life with good thoughts, good actions, and good words in order to keep chaos at bay. This chaos comes directly from the evil deity of the religion, which means humans are directly responsible for helping counter the chaotic emanations of the evil deity.
This makes sense if you consider that the religion was made by a person or people who were humans. Humans tend to assume that they are the central figures in stories because, for recorded history, humans have been the primary shapers of the landscape around them.
It should be noted that not all religions fall prey to this, Buddhism for example, but many do.
The Problem of Evil
The problem of evil does not apply to every religion equally. Some make no assertions about a being who would be in a position to do anything about it, such as Buddhism. For the problem of evil to be a true problem for a religion, the religion must have some contradictory theology about a being who is both benevolent enough to not want evil or suffering in the world, also being powerful enough to do something about it, and yet doing nothing. For example, Christianity claims to have an omnibenevolent (all caring) and omnipotetnt (all powerful) deity. If their deity truly possesses both of these qualities at once, we have a contradiction.
- An omnibenevolent deity would not wish to see suffering and would do everything within it’s power to prevent suffering.
- And onmipotent deity has the power to do literally anything.
- And omnibenovelent and omnipotent has both the power and desire to prevent all suffering forever.
- Suffering exists in the world.
- Therefore, a deity that is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent can not possibly exist.
A similar wording can be used for most any religion that professes to have a benevolent deity that would be in the position to prevent evil and suffering.
To give a gratuitous nod to Epicurus because I am particularly fond of the quote,
“Is god willing to prevent Evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Epicurus
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh Evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?”
Prayers do not Work
The following sections are more focused on Christianity. Of course, the following points work on any religion that makes similar claims, such as Islam or Judiasm . I’m focusing on Christianity since I am more familiar with the claims of Christianity than other other religion.
The bible makes very strong assurances that prayer should work. Despite these assurances, praying does nothing.
Studies to determine the efficacy of prayer have been conducted. Instead of conclusive evidence that prayer works, some report minor benefits, most report no benefit at all, and still others report detriments. If a god truly did exist who answered prayers, we would expect far more evidence to fall on the side of prayer being useful rather than the mixed results we do have
Christians tend to claim that God is in control and has a master plan (examined in the next section), and that events unfold in regards to that plan. If this is the case, then why pray at all?
- If you pray for something, and it happens, then it was always going to happen.
- If you pray for something and it doesn’t happen, it was never going to happen.
- If you pray for something not to happen, and it happens, it was always going to happen
- If you pray for something not to happen, and it doesn’t, it never was going to.
In any case, the net effect of praying is a waste of time if God truly has a plan. What happens was always going to happen, and nothing you do will change that. This brings up some horrifying implications for human free will and being sent to hell, examined next.
Religiously Prescribed Morality
This section is again aimed a little more towards Christianity, but it applies to any religion that claims their god, or a belief in a god, is the basis for morality.
Getting your morality from religion runs afoul of a particularly troubling problem known as the Euthyphro Dilemma. The dilemma provides two distinct possibilities that are unpleasant or dismiss the need for a divine law giver. It can be summarized as follows.
Is something moral because it is moral, or is it moral because god commands it to be moral?
If something is moral because god commands it to be moral, then we have a problem. God could command literally anything, no matter how heinous, to be a moral act and it would instantly be moral and good to do it.
If god commands you to help an old lady cross the street, it’s moral and good to do so. If god commands you to kill the old lady crossing the street, it’s moral and good to do so. If, after destroying the city god commanded you to, god then commands you to kill the men, women, and children except for those girls and women who have not known men, those you keep for yourself (as shown in Numbers 31:17-18)…. it’s moral and good.
On the other hand, if something is moral simply because it is moral, then why do we need god to tell us what is moral?
Through the process of our own inquiry and research, we should be able to discover which things are moral and which things are not. This research would lead to a continuing improvement of our understanding of what is moral and what is not.
There have been many attempts to circumvent the Euthyphro Dilemma, and I am of the opinion that no attempt so far has succeeded in a satisfactory manner. As one example, Judiasm posits that morality is simply part of God’s nature. If this is the case, then the question shifts from “what is moral?” to “which god defines morality?”. As a brief examination of Judiasm, Norse Pantheon, and Greek Pantheon shows, the inherent “morality” ascribed to each god varies wildly. This means that, ultimately, divine morality is still an arbitrary depending on the god you are talking about. In the end, attempts to show divine morality fail to provide a rational basis for morality.
I should point out that I find some small fault with the Dilemma’s lack of additional options, such as there being no such thing as an inherently moral act or morality being a social construct. The dilemma does provide a valid rebuttal to divine command theory, though, and is a good place to start discussions.
The Christian God is a Terrible God
This section specifically relates to Christianity, and only Christianity. It is a critique of why I could never follow the god of the bible, even if I thought that god existed.
When talking to Christians today, you’re likely to hear words like “Loving”, “Merciful”, “Just”, “Kind”, “Powerful”, and “Personal” when describing God. This portrays a god that you’d like to meet and get a tea (or beverage of your choice) with. When reading the bible, a different picture of god emerges.
In genesis, we are greeted by God, moving about and creating stuff like plants, animals, and humans. Only a short 6 chapters later, we’re told that god regrets ever making man and wipes almost everything off the face of the earth with a flood. We then continue our descent into madness with animal sacrifices, the destruction of cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah, and move onto even more genocide with god commanding the slaughter of other nations in Exodus.
Genocide aside, let’s examine the things that god values based off of the commandments that were examined earlier. To be charitable, I’ll assume that the ten commandments as commonly ascribed today are the valid ones and ignore the multitude of commandments in Exodus 20-23. to summarize, here are the commandments.
- Three relating to only worshiping and honoring this specific god
- Making sure you only work 6 days
- Be nice your parents
- Not killing (contradicted by god’s own commands later)
- Not screwing someone else’s wife or husband (whether consensual or not)
- Not stealing (Contradicted by god’s own commands later)
- Not lying about your neighbor
- Don’t even think about taking stuff that’s not yours. Thinking about it is a thought crime.
There is very little in there about any sort of moral behavior. The three from this list that come the closest to being sound advice are 3, 4, 6, and 7, with 5 depending on whether or not the actions are consensual. This is a 50% success rate at best. The rest are all nonsense that do nothing but show the Christian God as being shallow and full of himself.
I personally believe that Richard Dawkins summed up the god shown in the old testament best.
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
Of course, many Christians react to this description by pointing out that the Christian God isn’t really like that. They’ll say we need to look to the new testament to get a real picture of God since he’s different now. While the new testament does provide a different picture of an aspect of god (ie: Jesus), it does nothing to show whether or not the Christian god is any different now than before.
For example, Jesus’ sacrifice on the behalf of humanity is the primary event pointed to as evidence of god’s true nature. If this is the case, then why does Jesus continue to preach about hell, and the horrors you will meet if you don’t follow this god blindly? Why can this god still not simply forgive? This inability to forgive a group for the relatively small crime of disobedience and thought crimes paints the picture of a very vindictive and petty god who exacts incomprehensible infinite punishment for a very small “crime”.
I have also heard Christians claim that the rules of the old testament no longer apply. To that end, they point to Jesus himself claiming that he did not come to destroy any laws, but to fulfill them. However, this misses the next few sentences where he says “Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19). Laws may have been fulfilled, yes, but they are still in full effect. Some Christians do still try live by these laws, but most – especially those I met and know – do not.
Finally, I’ve heard many claim that Jesus’ sacrifice demonstrates god’s love for his people. Unfortunately, Jesus’ death continues to paint a troubling picture of God while being unnecessary when examined. Remember that this is all to absolve the chosen group from the crime of their great-great-great-great……great-grandparent’s (Adam and Eve’s) disobedience. If God truly loved His people, as many Christians claim, why would He require such a gruesome and unnecessary sacrifice rather than simply forgiving them, as we see humans doing for each other?
This inability to change – the demand for a sacrifice – shows that god did not change for many many thousands of years. God demands a sacrifice to wipe the slate clean, and he absolutely refuses to simply forgive without one. If god has changed from the violent nature seen in the old testament, there should be some record of this throughout the new testament. Instead, we see a continuation – if not escalation – of the same behaviors, just hidden behind a more benevolent exterior in the form of Jesus. This problematic behavior continues throughout the bible until the very end. In the final book of the bible, god is still portrayed as being just as vindictive and judgemental as ever before, passing judgement on the earth and causing all manner of havoc for those still living there.
While this list is non-exhaustive, I don’t have the desire to exhaustively list out all the issues in the new testament. On the whole, the Christian god is not a deity that I could ever find myself following.